Ahh, how I love you, school holidays. You give me time to digest stuff like this, which was written by a chap named Sam Eifling for Deadspin.com recently. Wanna know which letters in Scrabble give you a mathematical advantage, according to their frequency in the English language compared to their numerical value in the game? Have a read of the link and the comments that go along with it, and you’ll be unbeatable! Well, maybe…

FWIW, Words With Friends goes someway to making the playing field more even among the letters of the alphabet, which is to be expected given it was created just four years ago and not 75 like Scrabble. Specifically, making both H and Y worth 3 instead of 4 gets them closer to Eifling’s Ideal Points Value. The same can be said for L and U – both originally 1 in Scrabble but given a more ‘Ideal’ value of 2 in WWF. (If none of this paragraph makes sense to you so far, then read the link first.) But then given the proliferation of ‘help’ (aka cheat) sites that can be easily accessed via an additional window on your deivce, I reckon the old school tiles, wooden stands and good ol’ tangible game board are a more reliable test of one’s true vocabulary skill.